Friday, September 23, 2005

"Destroy"

I got an email from one concerned reader about his kanji tattoo for “destroy”. Along in the email, he has provided a link to one of the companies that sells the tattoo flash where his tattoo came from.

What the character 儡 really meant was not "destroy", but "puppet" or "dummy"!

I was overwhelmed about the number of misleading translations and errors they had on their website. It is obvious that people ran that website did not understand Chinese or Japanese. They should have consulted with someone before posting misleading product on their site. This is a blunt display of unethical business practice.

When people get sick from eating at unsanitary restaurants, they could file complains with the food safety branch of the government. What would you do when you have gibberish tattooed on your body?

"Our translations are carried out by qualified translators. All images in the 'rate by tattoo' and 'library' sections are submitted either by users or by artists and are not done by us. I have seen many poor and wrong translations myself submitted in the galleries but they are not available for printing and are examples of what people have had done or sketched up and are not examples of our work."(original email)

It is also interesting to point out the pages mentioned in my original posting have now became "members only". (It has always been "members only")